This space used to house the Claremont Café, which outgrew its origins as a gourmet cafeteria to become a serious Mediterranean bistro with Peruvian menu incursions. Now, new owners are putting Central American influences on the same canvas of Mediterranean-type foods. Our server told us the chef is from Honduras, and we ordered everything even vaguely Latin except the “Argentine Steak,” but the kitchen seemed equally adept with risotto or meat loaf, as with a Salvadoran-enchilada special.

Some early criticisms must have been answered by the time I got there, and we had a most enjoyable meal, although desserts are still clearly underdeveloped. To start with that Salvadoran enchilada ($6.95), it’s based on a tostada, a crisp flat tortilla. Since enchilada in culinary terms means “wrapped roll” (although the old Hispanic community in the Southwest has a stacked enchilada made of soft tortillas), this doesn’t look like your idea of an enchilada. And it isn’t really hand food. But as a kind of salad or morsel appetizer, it works quite well, with the organizing flavor of black beans and large pieces of beet, hard-boiled egg, strips of chicken, and lots of salad heaped on.

Rhode Island calamari ($7.95) are also not what you might expect — they’re not deep-fried. An early critic wrote that they were bland, so my party had to deal with quite a lot of sautéed squid strongly flavored with jalapeño peppers. I did like squid in this preparation, and there was a lot of it, and a lot of baby spinach underneath. This is an appetizer to have as an entrée sometimes.

Platano frito ($6.95) isn’t really what we expect in fried plantains, either. The thin rounds of plantain are fried, but not to a crisp, and then topped with guacamole and cream. Crab cakes ($9.95) are good and meaty, almost to the point of falling apart, with an especially garlicky cream sauce and, again, a lot of salad.

My favorite entrée was Tuscan meat loaf ($11.95), reportedly made of boar and beef, though I didn’t get a wild-boar or even game-farm-boar flavor — just a rich, meaty taste. The loaf is heaped on superb mashed potatoes, with some sweet-sour greens on the side, a layer of mushrooms on top, and just a wisp of sauce. Could be the meat loaf of the year.

I also liked a quasi-Mediterranean dish of cod and mahogany clams in a lobster broth with polenta ($14.95). The twist here is that polenta isn’t usually part of this kind of fish stew in Europe, but it could be, as the combination of creamy grits and seafood broth is comfort food. The side vegetable was broccoli rabe, a little bitter as it gets into the winter, but a nice foil for sweet-tasting seafood.

My seafood taste was captured by a special on ocean perch ($13.95), a wonderfully sweet and fresh piece of fish accompanied by a beet risotto (alarmingly pink, but with the familiar flavor dominated by cheese, with bits of varicolored beet). The side vegetable was “roast cauliflower,” and this deserves a steady engagement. Cauliflower is bland, and invites spice in most cuisines. But here they really roast it to a point where there is some browning at the edges, and that intensifies the real flavor of the cauliflower.

The Omelettry Café With a name like the Omelettry, you’d expect an homage to the egg, not the huevo.

Tortas out the trunk The video for Chingo Bling’s “Walk like Cleto” opens in a dank basement full of scantily dressed chicas wrapping packages in butcher paper, drug-cartel style.

Taqueria El Carrizal Central and South American dishes and Mexican tacos favored by Latino patrons seem close to Allston’s authentically minded spirit.

Taco Loco Like many Boston-area Mexican restaurants, Taco Loco is run by Salvadorans, here a friendly, hustling bunch serving cheap, very fresh-tasting tacos, burritos, and pupusas to local crowds.

Tortilla Flats Some first impressions last for years, and I’m happy to report that we’ve finally overcome them to appreciate Tortilla Flats on its own terms.

Villa México Café Reviewing restaurants is a pretty sweet gig for me, but it can be a trial for my less food-obsessed family and friends, whom I regularly dragoon into helping me sample the length and breadth of cheap-eats menus.

Review: Señor Flaco’s It's good to see a restaurant with a sense of humor. As well as serving good Tex-Mex chow, Señor Flaco's offers up a good dose of levity.

Señor Flaco's It's good to see a restaurant with a sense of humor. As well as serving good Tex-Mex chow.

2006 restaurant awards Well, here we are in our imaginary tuxedos, passing out imaginary awards for fine-dining experiences — culinary performances which are sometimes hard to repeat and usually go undocumented.

Rincon Salvadoreño Rincon means “corner” in Spanish, so Rincon Salvadoreño offers us a cozy and transplanted corner of El Salvador in which to rest and to have a bite.

REVIEW: BONCHON | August 10, 2012 What am I doing in this basement in Harvard Square, reviewing the second location of a multi-national franchise chain?

REVIEW: CARMELINA'S | July 25, 2012 After a good run with "Italian tapas" under the name Damiano (a play on the given name of chef-owner Damien "Domenic" DiPaola), this space has been rechristened as Carmelina's — after the chef's mother and his first restaurant, opened when he was an undergraduate in Western Mass — and the menu reconfigured to feature more entrées.

REVIEW: TONIC | July 06, 2012 Bad restaurant idea number 16: let's do a neighborhood bar-bistro where there already is one.

REVIEW: HAPPY’S BAR AND KITCHEN | June 20, 2012 In a year of bad restaurant ideas, one of the better bets is to have a successful fancy-food chef try a downscale restaurant.